


The Crystal Gens

by SeedSerotiny



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Gets a little Real, It gets happier, Peridot has a really bad time, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-11 13:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15973211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeedSerotiny/pseuds/SeedSerotiny
Summary: It’s beautiful. Peridot had never seen such enormous expanses of blue before. The ship answers her question before she even fully forms it: it’s water. It’s huge swathes of liquid water, sparkling below swirls of soft white. More water, in vapor form... Between the breaks in the cloud cover, she sees a spectrum of reds and browns and brilliant, jaw-dropping greens.“Earth.”Peridot turns to her commander. “What?”“Earth,” Jasper repeats. “That’s what the locals call it.” She smirks. “It’s an interesting place.”A fast and loose retelling of Peridot's arc, slid to the other end of the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> And so begins my love letter to classic scifi. My interest in writing began when I was spending all my free time in high school with my face buried in crinkly, yellow, 'Golden Age' scifi paperbacks, so this was almost an inevitability. It's different from what I usually see on Ao3, but I hope you nerds will enjoy it regardless!

Lapis Lazuli awoke with a choking gasp and a splitting headache. Her thoughts swam slowly around her skull as she squinted into the bluish lights before her eyes. She tried to remember where she was, how she had gotten there, and why she was aching in every one of her joints. 

She remembered… fear. And then pain, and a falling sensation, and the shrill warning beeps of her damaged Wings.

She blinked in the present. Her eyes were beginning to focus. Her Wings. That's where she was. The glow she was seeing the same blue as the controlboard of her starship. She licked at her teeth with her dry tongue, tasting the metallic, chemical aftertaste of Stasis. Emergency protocols must have kicked in, putting her to sleep, allowing her to heal and hide. She thanked her lucky stars that the ship had survived... Whatever had happened. 

The lines of the controlboard came into focus. Lapis tried to remember how to read. "Ship, damage report?" She requested. It answered with a bleep and produced a long list on its screen. Too long. She was grounded. 

Lapis tried to lift herself out of the ship's cradle. Her arms protested. How long was she out, that what amounted to a simple push up was effortful? Her veins went icy. She wondered if she wanted to know.

She managed to sit up and push against the transparent barrier that formed the cockpit of her Wings. It opened at her touch, folding back, letting in a rush of salty, humid air. 

She looked around. Sand and ocean. This registered as a surprise. She… didn't think she went down by the ocean...

"Uhm, hello?" An unfamiliar voice called out.

Lapis spun her head around. She felt dizzy and saw stars from the sudden movement, but her eyes found and focused on the figure. She reached instinctively for the weapons controller. It didn't respond to her touch. She was unarmed. "Who are you?" She growled.

"Whoa," he said, alarmed, raising his hands above his head. "I'm not going to hurt you. I found your ship. I didn't know someone was in there."

She gave him a quick sweep with her eyes. He was unarmed, like her, aside from a collection of tools. He was also apparently male, with slight facial asymmetry, and a few blemishes across his forehead. She looked at his chest to be sure. It rose and fell at that tell-tale too fast rate. He was Unmodified. Human. 

She relaxed. An unarmed human was not a threat. Especially one so small. She wondered if he was a child. She had never seen one so close before.

"Hey," she said.

He exhaled a breath. "Sorry, for… touching your stuff. I wanted to fix this." He gestured at her ship.

She rose to her feet, fighting vertigo. She stepped out of the cockpit and onto the sand and turned to face her small craft. She winced. Most of the damage was cosmetic, but seeing her Wings covered in battle scars felt like a physical pain. They were a part of her as much as any of her limbs. And they were currently crippled. "Can you? Fix it?"

He shrugged and smiled. "I can try."

Lapis felt overwhelmed, like she might cry. She blamed it on the Stasis hangover. "Please."

He smiled again and went to work. Lapis noticed he made an effort to move slowly when he reached for a tool. She made him nervous. Or he was being considerate of her apprehension. Maybe it was both. She settled into a sitting position on the sand, watching.

His hand hovered over the plate that protected the main engine components. Lapis decided to be helpful. "To open it, you have t–" 

The door slid open. He had touched it in just the right way to persuade the ship to open the panel. Lapis wondered how an unaltered human knew how to repair a starship. She supposed she should be alarmed about leaked technological information, or something. Instead, she was just grateful. She was no engineer and didn't know where she would even start looking for one.

"I'm Steven, by the way. It's nice to meet you!" He said, keeping his eyes on his work. He was smiling again. He smiled a lot. 

She hesitated a moment, then said: "it's nice to meet you too, Steven." It was.

"So, what's your name?"

"My name?"

"You know, your…" he tongued his cheek like he was thinking hard, searching for a word. "What do I call you?" He asked instead.

She nearly rattled off her full designation out of habit, but that probably wasn't what 'Steven' was looking for.

"My name is Lapis," she replied. He grinned. That must have been a decent answer.

"So, what brings you to these parts, Lapis? Seeing the sights?" He asked, playful humor in his voice.

She felt herself smile. Despite the helpless confusion of a situation she was in, she was smiling. Huh. "Something like that." 

'Seeing the sights.' Appropriate, for someone on a reconnaissance mission. 

"Where'd you come from?" he asked.

"Homeworld." 

He giggled, "I knew that! I meant, how did you get on this beach?"

"Oh… I really don't know." She tried to remember again. Her thoughts were coming in clearer, like she was tuning in to a previously fuzzy signal. But the memories were still blurred. "I think I was attacked. I crashed. My ship must have put me to sleep for a while."

"How long were you asleep?" He asked. His pitch had raised and wavered. He was nervous. Why?

"I don't know," she told him.

He went silent. She watched him work. Her hands were clumsy and unsure, like he was out of practice, but the list of problems displayed on her controlboard was dwindling. He was making steady progress with the repairs.

"Where are you from?" Lapis asked. It seemed polite.

He hesitated a moment. "Beach City. It's down the coast from here. I was on a walk when I saw your ship washing out of the sand."

Had she been buried? A shudder ran up her spine. She didn't like that. Her imagination produced a  
sense of crushing weight and deep darkness. Her breath came almost as quickly as Steven's.

He looked at her, concerned. "Are you okay?"

She met eyes with the stranger in front of her. He had offered to help her with her Wings, and now he was asking her about her wellbeing. Though it was against her nature and her common sense, she told the truth. "I'm just… a little overwhelmed. This is a lot to wake up to."

He looked at her with a depth of compassion that she was unable to handle. She turned her focus to the waves crashing against the shore. 

Steven cleared his throat. "By the way, your ship is really cool. It's like… a motorcycle mixed with a fighter jet. But even cooler!"

"I... don't know what any of that means."

Steven giggled, "I mean I like your starship."

"Oh. Thanks." She liked them, too. 

"You're welcome!"

She found herself smiling again. Maybe she had sustained brain damage in the crash.

"Hey Lapis, I think I have it mostly working. Will you turn it on?" Steven asked.

She nodded once and raised a hand. The engines hummed to life, and she felt a wave of electric sensation across her back and shoulder blades as the neurological link between her and the craft was restored to full capacity. 

Ah, she was whole again. 

Steven cheered, punching a fist into the air. He ran to Lapis's side and placed a warm hand on her arm. "Can you show me how it flies?" He looked at her with stars in his eyes and pink on his cheeks. 

Well, she had to see if everything was working properly, of course.

She lifted both arms. Her Wings rose. Trails of sand fell from nooks and crannies on the ship's surface. She shrugged her shoulders and they rocked, opening and closing various airfoils and whatnot, shaking loose a cloud of fine white sand in the process. Steven's whooping increased in volume. 

"It's so cool!!"

Lapis started to understand the word. "It's a they. Like a person. Not an it," she corrected, smiling. He should know, since he brought them back to life.

"They're so cool!" He said with the same inflection as before. She felt herself hum with amusement. His enthusiasm was endearing. 

"Wanna go for a ride?" She offered.

Steven gasped like he had been given all the worlds' riches. "More than anything!"

Lapis hopped into the cockpit and held out a hand. When he clasped it, she pulled him in front of her. It was a bit of a squeeze, but they managed. She thought his face might split open from smiling. "Ready?" 

"Ready!"

They rose. She unfurled her Wings, creating the right kind of surfaces for atmospheric lift. It felt like stretching after a long sleep. It… was stretching after a long sleep.

How long? She still didn't know. But Steven wanted a ride. 

"Hold on," she said, and shot them off toward the horizon.

He whooped, barely hanging on, as they rose and fell and tilted, trailing wingtips against the water as they banked left and right. The salty wind and spray whipped around them. Lapis vowed to leave the top down more often.

An idea formed in her mind. Another way to show off. She swung the ship in a wide arc, gaining altitude without tipping them backward into the ocean. Then, she held her and Steven at a hover. 

"Whoa," he said, staring out at the beach. The waves sparkled, and the land faded into a bluish haze. 

"Wanna see something 'cool'?" She asked, using his word.

"Cooler than this?" He boggled, twisting around to face her.

She grinned. "Watch." She pointed with one hand towards the waves in front of the nose cone. He twisted, his hands flying to his cheeks. Once she was sure he was looking, she clenched her fist.

The water in front of them exploded into columns of foam as she released a volley of the ship's signature weapon. The towers of water broke up as they fell, drizzling into the ocean. A rainbow formed as the sun streaked through the airborne droplets.

Her eardrums nearly burst from the sound of his delighted squeal. "How did you do that? Can I try? Please please please?"

She frowned. "You can shoot it from here," she said, indicating the manual weapons controller, to the right and below the controlboard. "But it won't work if you don't have a Gensto–"

Before she finished the last phoneme of that sentence, another volley sent a second set of geysers skyward. His hand was on the controller, and she heard the deep, low hum of an activated Genstone. 

She nearly dropped them both out of the sky. "You're a Gen?" She sputtered, backing away as best she could on the small seat. She trained eyes on him again. No, he couldn't be. He was too... Imperfect. Too unstandardized. Too unspecialized. Then, how?

He threw a leg over the cradle of the ship so that she could face her. He looked apologetic. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I just... didn't want you to be afraid."

"You don't look like a Gen," she said.

"I'm only half. Look." He lifted his shirt, revealing his Genstone, the powerful nanocomputer that allowed her and every other Diamond-made Gen access to their specialized technology.

"Where did you get that?" She asked, staring numbly.

"From my mom. I promise I didn't steal it. Wait," he said. He reached up a hand and hooked open his cheek, displaying his tongue and gums. "See?" He slurred.

Alongside the usual human pink, in blotches and specks, was the same blue-purple pigment that colored her own cheeks and tongue. 

She couldn't tell if she was alarmed or fascinated. 

"Whuh, how?" She responded intelligently.

"Well, you'll have to ask the Gens about that one."

She gripped her skirt in her fists. "Which Gens?"

Steven swallowed audibly. "Uhh."

Lapis took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. She released her skirt. "I'm not going to hurt you, Steven." It was painful to see him so afraid of her, so soon after his face showed only joy. She… really liked him, despite only knowing him for an afternoon. 

He looked conflicted, just a moment, then blurted. "The Crystal Gens. They're my family."

His family. Her enemy. All of Homeworld's enemy.

And, she realized, with a blood pressure spike and a sudden, vivid memory, the rebels responsible for shooting her down. 

Lapis limbs suddenly felt incredibly heavy. "Steven… what's happening in the war?"

His breath hitched. "It's over."

It's over. "Who won?"

"Nobody," he said. He looked infinity sad. "But the Earth is still independent." 

Words stuck in her throat. She knew what question she should ask next. 

"How long ago did the war end?"

Again, that expression of deep compassion. "Lapis, I–"

"Just tell me, please." She watched Steven take a deep breath.

"Over 500 years ago."


	2. Chapter 1

A specific kind of bleep from her limb enhancers informed Peridot that she was no longer on leave. Thank the stars. Free time was a curse to a Gen like Peridot. Too little stimulation, too little structure. She deployed a screen immediately and read her orders.

\+ Reconnaissance mission  
Location: Sol system, Sol III  
Report to hanger 6PC

Peridot squinted. Reconnaissance? Why were they sending her for a mission like that? And Sol III… that wasn't a Homeworld colony.

She asked the screen for clarification as she started walking through the corridors to the designated hanger. 

\+ Specific mission: Inspect abandoned Genetics lab and retrieve datalogs.  
Crew mission: Investigate evidence of non-Homeworld Gen activity [CLASSIFIED]

Peridot nearly tripped. There weren't supposed to be any non-Homeworld Gens. How did that even work? Who would they even report to? The concept was just entirely too foreign for her to understand. 

She pulled up the mission roster. Two other Gens. A Jasper, which made sense, if the unidentified Gens might be hostile rogues, and a… Lapis Lazuli?

"What." She said out loud. A few Gens looked at her. She cleared her throat and ducked quickly into the hanger to escape their puzzled attention. Her screen informed her which dock she should report to. Mechanically, she followed directions, thoroughly distracted.

Lapis Lazulis were not for reconnaissance missions. At least, not one like this. They were for colonization. For war. 

Peridot's gauntlet's bleeped again, indicating her arrival at the correct dock. She inspected the ship. A Manual Class Starship: a speedy stardrive, basic weapon capabilities... Another mystery. This was not a battleship. Were they expecting a fight or not?

She stepped on board.

"Peridot!" A gruff voice nearly shouted. The technician jumped.

"Ah, yes," she spun, spotting the Jasper, a wild look in her eyes and a grin on her face. "Ser?" Peridot added the honorific.

"Have you read the mission briefing? It's wild!" 

"I'm just catching up," she admitted. "Has the Lapis Lazuli arrived?"

"Yeah, get this," the Jasper said, disturbingly giddy. "She and her Wings are in the brig. She's classified as a prisoner!"

"Wh-what?" A Gen prisoner? Why? How?

"Apparently her story and the logs from her Wings don't match up. But you get to tell me the rest, Interrogator!" She slapped Peridot on the spine hard enough to make her wince. Quartz Gens… Peridot double checked all this new information on her screens. It was all true. Ugh. She was not looking forward to badgering an informant. It seemed so… brutish. Below her.

For now, at least, she could just be a Pilot. "Permission to take off, Ser?"

"Do what you want," Jasper said, scrolling through the details of the briefing on the ship's computer. She didn't have her own screens like Peridot. "And enough of that Ser bullshit, I'm not one of those insecure commanders that needs her ass kissed." 

"Yes, S–" Peridot caught herself. "Okay, Jasper." The informality felt strange on her tongue, but this Jasper clearly didn't hold proper speech in high acclaim. She'd have to get used to it.

Peridot sat down in the pilot's chair. Now, this was something she was more than comfortable with. With a flick of both wrists, she interfaced with the ship. 

Correction, she became the ship. Her eyes went blank and then saw everything, in 360-degree vision, from the many ocelli that dotted the ships hull. She took in the hanger, marveling at the change that took place when her vision included a much wider band of the electromagnetic spectrum. This never got old. 

Another flick of her wrists, or rather, the wrists of her limb enhancers, and the hanger doors swung open. She felt a low, bass hum, both in her body and in the hull of the ship, as the stardrive engine revved to life. A gentle nudge and the ship lifted, coasting upwards and outwards and into the thin atmosphere above Homeworld. She felt the whistling wind, the tug and flow of the planet's magnetic field, the steady increase in subjective gravity as they climbed higher, faster, approaching escape velocity, then passing it, then–

Space.

For a moment, they felt weightless, in a split second of orbital free-fall, before the magnetic mechanism in their boots and the LBNP system in their suits approximated planetary gravity. Peridot barely noticed; her body and its concerns felt distant and small while she piloted the ship, though she still felt the curl of a smile on her lips as she directed the ship into a spin, taking aim for the Sol system.

This was the best part. She felt the tension as the ship coiled space-time like an elastic, building a sort of potential energy that would fling them at light-speed breaking 'velocity’' across the cosmos. She held it just a moment longer than she needed to, enjoying the anticipation, the power, and then, she released.

Before, they had felt weightless, but now, in a real sense, they were, existing outside the reach of any celestial body's pull or the effects of acceleration as they skipped through hyperspace. They'd be there in a few personal cycle's time. Peridot lowered her hands and fell back into her body. She blinked a few times, feeling almost blind, before glancing toward Jasper.

The larger Gen was at ease, gazing almost boredly back at Peridot. She must have done this many times. "You really enjoy that, don't you?" Jasper asked, smirking like she was in on a joke and Peridot wasn't.

"Uhm, yes," Peridot admitted. She was allowed to enjoy her work, but somehow she always felt guilty when someone caught her at it.

"Where are you from?"

That… was a weird question. "I was made on Homeworld."

"Hmm," Jasper said, cryptically. "For a second, I was picking up some Earth vibes."

Peridot had no idea what any of that sentence meant. "Earth? I'm not familiar..."

Jasper stood up and laughed. "You're about to be," she said, then left, heading for the crew quarters. 

Everything was silent, asides from the hum of the ship's CO² scrubbers. Peridot stared at Jasper's open briefing screen.

This was absolutely, unequivocally, the strangest mission of Peridot's life. And it had just begun.

\----

Ugh. An interrogation. Why did this have to be Peridot's job? A classified mission often had a rather bare-bones crew, but really, could they not supply them with a single qualified gem to do something so… unpleasant? What was even the protocol for this sort of thing? A Lapis Lazuli outranked an engineer like Peridot, should she address her as such? She plodded along, descending to the ship's bowels and the door to the brig. Outside, in the anteroom, a Wings ship sat, immobilized and cut off from any mental interfacing by a jamming field. 

Peridot rubbed at the junction between her flesh and her right gauntlet. The thought made her squeamish, like she was looking at an amputated limb. She shook it off and opened the cell door. 

"So, uhm, Informant, I've been told that there were contrad–" she faltered. The Lapis Lazuli lounged in midair, hovering above her cot. "Where are your boots?" Peridot blurted.

The prisoner glanced at Peridot lazily, with an expression of apathy that felt more malicious than outright disdain. She gestured with one finger toward a corner. Peridot followed it, spotting the gravity-producing boots and the cloth of…

"Why aren't you wearing pants?" Peridot strangled out. This Gen had discarded all of the gear that produced the simulated gravity that kept them grounded and healthy during space flight. The level of disregard for safety… the baffling disrespect of regulations... Why was everyone on this ship insane? 

Free from gravity, the prisoner's skirt billowed around her calves and ankles. She gave a small kick, sending a wave through the fabric. "Sorry, do you find that distracting?" Her lips curled and her eyes lidded.

Flirting. That was flirting: an action so far removed from protocol and decorum and sanity that Peridot nearly turned around and ran screaming from the room. Instead, she cleared her throat. "Do you mind sitting down at the table? I'm here to interview you."

The expression of aggressive apathy was back. She slid into one of the chairs, anchoring herself in place with one ankle, and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "You're wasting your time."

Probably. But orders were orders. Peridot sat down in the opposite chair and pulled up the relevant files. The Lapis Lazuli returned after a long time out of contact with her previously assigned Homeworld base. She claimed to have woken up from an extended time in stasis and returned without seeing anything of strategic note. However, her Wings had registered an unidentified Gen user, a recent one. Peridot locked eyes with the prisoner. Why would she lie?

"So, am I being interrogated, or are you just going catch up on your reading?"

Peridot growled. "I'm looking over your file. Why does your statement contradict your ship's?"

"I'm telling the truth. I didn't see anyone. The thing must be buggy." Preposterous. Wings do not get buggy.

"You were in a crash… did they scan you for possible brain damage?"

The apathy turned to anger. Frightening, wild anger. "Don't you da–"

Peridot flicked her wrists and the ship performed a medical scan. The reading scrolled over her screen. No physical damage. She had healed during stasis perfectly. But…

\+ Medically significant abnormalities detected  
Altered adrenal function  
Altered regional neurochemical composition  
Notable physical changes to the hippocampus and related midbrain structures  
Vascular hypert–

"Get out of my head!" The prisoner slammed two fists down onto the table. Her breath came fast and ragged.

Peridot's screen cut out as she jumped. She stared, slack-jawed. Trauma. Those were markers of trauma. That wasn't supposed to happen to Gens. Especially not the kind designed for warzones. Stars, what happened to her? "I didn't mean to offe–"

"I told you _no._ " She looked murderous. 

Peridot swallowed. She felt fortunate that the Gen's Wings were locked safely away and neutralized. "Okay, no more scans. Lapis Lazuli, I–"

The other Gen sat back with a dismissive huff. "My name is Lapis."

"Er…" Peridot was torn between treating this Gen delicately or shaking her until she stopped acting so damn erratic. "Lapis. I'm trying to understand. We are already on our way to investigate Sol III. We will find whichever Gen or Gens you interacted with when we get there. Why lie? Why make trouble for yourself?"

The Lapis Lazuli, er, Lapis, tilted back her head and looked at Peridot with something between hatred and pity. "I didn't see anything."

Well, this was going fantastic. Peridot had had enough. She stood up. "If you change your mind, ping me from the communication pad by the door. Otherwise, enjoy floating around this empty room, I guess." 

Lapis gave her a blank stare. Peridot got to her feet and marched out of the room. If they wanted a good interrogation, they should have sent a good interrogator. She had better things to do than receive open hostility from a possible traitor to Homeworld. 

Peridot found herself praying that the Lapis was telling the truth. If they arrived and found no Gens, then the mission would be a simple hard-copy data retrieval, which would be over in a relatively short amount of time. Never before had Peridot been so uncomfortable with a crew in her life. And that was saying something. 

She wondered what would happen to the prisoner after this mission. She was valuable, in that her Gen type was rare and well-engineered, but this particular model was… damaged, for lack of a better word. And, if she was truly withholding information from the Diamond authority...

What a gruesome thing to be involved in. 

But that wasn't Peridot's concern. She had a mission to carry out, and that was that. Best case scenario, it would over soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Space!!!


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A deal is struck

"You didn't get any new information out of her? None?" Jasper growled at her.

Peridot was annoyed that the taller gem continued to bother her while she double-checked their trajectory and arrival time. "Yes, that's what I said. She insists her Wings are malfunctioning."

"Bullshit."

"Yes, I know." They were going to get to Sol III at the expected time. Damn. Peridot was hoping a miracle would deliver them ahead of schedule. She interfaced with the ship again, unapologetically rendering Jasper's voice a little bit quieter, and did a superfluous maintenance check. Everything was in working order. She almost punched back out when she heard something. A bit of electromagnetic whispering coming from the ship. Was that… radio? Who the hell?

Peridot groaned. The Prisoner.

She stood up, giving herself vertigo from the abrupt return to her own flesh. Ugh. Jasper's voice came back into close focus. 

"What's up with you?"

"Oh, uh," Peridot found herself hesitating. Why, she had no idea. Some sort of misplaced sympathy had wormed its way into her mind, knowing that the Gen in the brig was likely going to spend the last of her short remaining lifespan locked away, suffering from the effects of whatever she had experienced in the Sol system. What an idiotic notion, that she should protect her from negative consequences... She should tell her mission commander, Jasper, what she had discovered and suspected immediately, so that the traitor could be dealt with. And Peridot was sure she was a traitor, now; no Diamond Authority Gen would be communicating in _radio_ of all things. Not when every Diamond dropship and base was equipped with at least one ansible. 

"Peridot, don't make me order you to tell me why you're standing there like a dumbass."

"Ah, sorry, Jasper, there was just… a minor malfunction in the ship. Nothing serious. I'll go deal with it immediately." It wasn't technically a lie.

Jasper grunted. Peridot scrambled for the brig, as nonchalantly as she could. She slammed through the door, swinging her eyes around the room. Her Genstone hummed, accelerating the speed of her movements and her ability to process visual information. She wondered which Gen had better reflexes, a spaceflight technician or a war machine.

Yeah, it was definitely the war machine. The communication pad, which had been ripped out of the wall at some point in Lapis's rudimentary hacking process, slammed into Peridot's face. She felt her nose break as she tumbled off her feet. "Shit!" She gasped, raising her gauntlets, putting the resilient composite material between her and another blow. Above her, Lapis stood, her arms raising the now-shattered communication pad above her head. Peridot felt adrenaline prickling through her limbs as she waited for another attack.

It didn't come. "Where's the Jasper?"

Peridot licked thick liquid off her upper lip. Blood. She didn't think she'd ever had the experience of bleeding before. She wasn't a fan. "You don't know who's on the crew roster."

Lapis smiled wide and wiggled the communication pad above her head. Oh, lovely, she was equipped with fangs. Peridot would never really criticize the Diamonds, of course, but that genetic addition was… almost a bit much. 

"... She's in the bridge. I didn't alert her."

Lapis narrowed her eyes. "Why?”

"Well, honestly, I didn't expect you to attack me like a cornered animal."

Lapis lowered her improvised weapon. "And yet you keep me muzzled in a cage?"

Peridot sacrificed the protection of one gauntlet to wipe under her nose and gingerly inspect the damage. The cartilage was definitely fractured. "That's not my decision."

The prisoner took one step forward and bent down low, her eyes level with Peridot's. "Make it your decision," she ordered. Somewhere deep in Peridot's mid-brain, alarms blared. 

"Look, you're very intimidating, and all," Peridot said, "but there's not much I can do."

"Unlock my Wings." 

Shit. She could do that. She even had the skill to do it without leaving a record of it in the ship's computer. But that would be suicide. "I'm not going to hand you the keys to my own murder weapon. Are you insane?"

Lapis smiled mirthlessly. "Probably." She raised the heavy comm-pad again. "Looks like you might have to take a gamble on that one. Because your choices are a guaranteed death now, or a possible death later. I'll let you do the math on the odds."

Peridot swallowed. Loyalty decreed that she sacrifice herself to keep resources out of the hands of the enemy. Hierarchy decreed that she protect Jasper, who would be in significantly more danger if Lapis had her enhancements. Common sense decreed that she shouldn't be bargaining with an unstable prisoner, no matter her arguments.

But sheer animal cowardice soundly trounced all three. It wasn't even a fair fight. "Okay."

Lapis smiled. "Good. Oh, and you'll do it without anybody knowing."

"Fine. Though I don't know how I'll quite explain away the broken nose."

"What broken nose?" Lapis said. It sounded more like a statement than a question. 

"Wha–the one on my fucking f–" Her words were interrupted by a hand over her mouth and another grasping the bridge of her nose. She got out the first syllable of a strangled swear before a crunch and white-hot pain was all she knew. 

Lapis released her when she stopped screaming. Peridot wondered if she would ever recover from the indignity of the situation. Above her eyes, her Genstone warmed and hummed, directing the nanites in her bloodstream to repair the newly set bone and to eat away at the bruises forming under her eyes. Fantastic, what a feature, a built-in system to cover up any evidence of abuse. Peridot didn't feel bad about criticizing the Diamonds for that one, especially since her Genstone didn't see fit to administer any painkillers while it was at it.

She glared at Lapis from where she sat on the ground. The other Gen looked at her with no trace of compassion, gesturing with a tilt of her head and eyes toward the door of the cell. 

Peridot found herself missing her time on leave.

\----

Peridot took her hands off the small ship. "There, your Wings are all yours."

She watched Lapis sigh and shrug her shoulders. "That's much better. Now, let's go over the deal one more time. For my peace of mind."

"I keep your cell door and your ship unlocked, and my mouth shut. Though I hardly call it a deal."

Lapis crossed her arms and leaned backward, floating in midair. "You get the benefit of me not blasting a hole in the ship while we're still in deep space, which would kill you and your commander in a gruesome fashion. I'm being generous."

"So, you plan on escaping, then? Running back to your friends on Sol III?"

"I don't have any friends."

Peridot stood and glared coldly at the stranger in front of her: the one that had broken her nose, stolen her dignity, and threatened her into committing a small act of treason. A retort rested on her tongue, bitter and acrid. 

“Have something to say?” Lapis said, daring her to speak. It was a bald-faced trap.

Peridot’s pulse quickened with hot anger. She swallowed it down along with her pride. “No.”

The other gem looked almost disappointed. “Then I guess you have a ship to fly.”

\----

So Peridot flew the ship.

Lapis’s restored connection to her Wings and her attempt to communicate with Sol III swiftly became easy secrets to keep. Jasper was snide, pushy, uncouth, and just generally unpleasant to be around. Her mood swings almost made her an impossible commander, but she was often so apathetic about the details of the mission that Peridot could hardly be bothered to consider her a commander at all. She stopped checking in to give her reports on their progress through the cosmos within two cycles. She started outright avoiding her within three. In moments of weakness, she found herself reveling in her involvement in what amounted to a small mutiny. 

But, mostly, she wanted so desperately for the mission to be over that she didn’t have time for any other thoughts.

Blessedly, a distraction arrived: landing day.

Peridot interfaced with the ship with a relieved sigh. There it was, that shrinking of her own mental world, the expansion of her vision and hearing, that feeling of being something bigger, something incredible: efficient, and well designed, and undeniably powerful. She took a deep breath, deeper than she managed those last few cycles, burdened by the weight of knowing that there was an armed criminal in the brig and that they were going into possible enemy territory, carrying the guilt of being coerced to act against her mission alongside the shame that it had been so easy. It all fell away as she coaxed space-time to re-envelope them in its conventional fabric, slipping through a quantum crack in the universe and into the bright yellow-white light of their destination’s star.

There was no stress relief quite like bending the laws of space-time to your will.

Peridot turns her eyes, both natural and artificial, towards the planet below them. 

It’s beautiful. Peridot had never seen such enormous expanses of blue before. The ship answers her question before she even fully forms it: it’s water. It’s huge swathes of liquid water, sparkling below swirls of soft white. More water, in vapor form... Between the breaks in the cloud cover, she sees a spectrum of reds and browns and brilliant, jaw-dropping greens. 

Beautiful. She thinks again. With a jolt, she remembers herself, and steals a glance toward her commander within the ship’s bridge, fearful she wouldn’t approve of the delay in their mission caused by the moment she had wasted gawking like a tourist. Instead, Jasper’s gaze is calm, pensive, focused only on the blue orb in front of them. 

Peridot swallows and swings them into an arc that will carry them into the planet’s atmosphere. 

“Earth.”

Peridot turns to her commander. “What?”

“Earth,” Jasper repeats. “That’s what the locals call it.” She smirks. “It’s an interesting place.”

Peridot looks out at the planet that’s growing larger in the ship’s screen as they orbit, rolling down its gravity well in a slow spiral. “You’ve been there?” 

“Heh, yep. A long time ago.” Jasper stands up from her chair and leaves. Peridot watches her go, puzzled. For a moment, she hesitates, then gives in to curiosity. Jasper’s personnel information displays on the ship’s screen, backlit by those bright swathes of blue.

\+ Planet of Origin: Sol III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mention ansibles in passing in this chapter. Ursula K. La Guin coined the term (bless her in a thousand ways), but it crops up in a ton of sci fi works as a faster-than-light Facetime device.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The arrive on Earth

Earth was a failed recolonization effort, Peridot recalls. Like most Homeworld colonies, it was seeded by the original human diaspora, thousands of years in the past and before the rise of the Gens and Homeworld’s empire. A biosphere-wide collapse throttled the population during the early days of colonization, resulting in a large-scale loss of technological and cultural information. Its voice went silent. Eventually, it was written off as a failed colony, and stricken from the starmaps. Until it was found again. 

The Diamonds rediscovered Sol III after eons of lost contact. Isolated, the Earth had developed a wildly unique culture. The usual recolonization strategy wasn’t working. The local, unmodified human beings resisted everything the Diamonds offered: technology, medicine, Genetics... A war began, and it was discovered that the locals had developed a wildly unique way of carrying that out as well. Progress was slow.

And then the rebellion started.

The information on the outernet about the rebellion had been scanty and largely second hand. But Peridot was motivated, focused, and avoiding her crewmates, so she was able to piece together a coherent history: it had begun with a small group of Gens, swayed by the rhetoric of the original colonists and fighting alongside them. Then, their numbers grew. More and more Gens betrayed their Homeworld, their creators, and turned on their own kind to keep the Earth independent. The Diamonds struck against them, wiping out the rebel forces entirely, but ultimately abandoned Sol III. It had been more trouble than it was worth. 

And now they were going back.

Apprehension swam in Peridot’s mind. Why this planet? Why this mission? Why her? There were too many unknowns, too much up to chance. The horrifying concept of Gens going against their purpose and defying the Diamonds in itself was too much, and now it was possible that they were going to encounter them, in the flesh, on a planet that hadn’t been mapped or studied in centuries. As they slid into the turbulent atmosphere, the shell of their ship sparking with the flames of incredible friction, Peridot’s pulse pounded and she silently hoped that the Lapis Lazuli in the hold was compassionate enough to wait for them to land and equalize pressure before jettisoning from her prison cell. 

Ugh. The Lapis Lazuli. Peridot felt a wave of anxious nausea. Worst case scenario, they were essentially delivering a deadly and well-armed weapon to former rebels. She wondered how they might feel about visitors. 

She didn’t have to wonder for long.

A bloom of indescribable pain shot through Peridot. The ship had been clipped, speared through by something impossibly fast and blazing white. She wrenched the ship from its wild new trajectory, flattening out their flight before it came into a deadly spin. The tear in the hull throbbed like a wound in her own flesh. It wasn’t good. They needed to land. Immediately. 

Peridot dove, juking as much as she could without ripping holes in the compromised hull of their ship, challenging the targeting system of whatever shot them. Her Genstone lit up almost painfully hot as she swept her eyes and scanners over the rapidly approaching planet below them. There! A swathe of flat beach, soft terrain, far from any signs of dense population. She banked, rolled, and braced herself.

The white-hot pain of the collision launched Peridot out of her interface with the ship. She fell to the ground, gasping, trying not to retch from the vertigo and the too-fresh memory of coarse sand grating over every one of the ship’s sensors. Blearily, she looked up at the screen, awaiting the damage report. 

Shit.

Jasper barreled into the bridge on pounding feet. “What the actual fuck was that?”

Peridot focused on breathing through her nose. “We were hit.”

“By what?” 

“How in the stars am I supposed to know?” Peridot practically screamed. 

“What the hell did they hit us with?” Jasper growled. 

“I just said–” Peridot began, baffled by her commander’s idiotic repeated question, but her voice caught before she finished the sentence. Turning to Jasper, she realized she wasn’t talking to Peridot anymore. She was talking to the Gen whose chin she pinched roughly between her massive fingers. Lapis.

Ice water replaced Peridot’s blood. When did she retrieve the prisoner? Why was she being so rough with her? Words of warning strangled in Peridot’s throat. She didn’t know she could use her Wings…

“Fuck you,” Lapis spat. Jasper tossed her to the ground with brute strength and a sneer. Lapis yelped as she hit the hard surface and looked up with the promise of murder in her eyes.

“Peridot,” Jasper barked, “status.”

The order straightened Peridot’s spine and grounded her in the urgent needs of the present. “We’re stranded, Ser. Until repairs can be made.”

A slow smile spread over Jasper’s face. 

“Why are you smiling?” Peridot stammered, incredulous.

“Because,” Jasper said, grabbing Lapis by the arm and yanking her roughly to her feet before dragging her towards the exit. “If we can’t run, we might just have to fight.”

Peridot’s knees shook as she pulled herself upright, leaning on the controlboard. “Fight? We don’t even know who shot us!”

Jasper put her hand on the airlock door and pushed, ignoring protocol and unlocking the second door without bothering to shut the first. Peridot’s ears popped as Earth’s heavy atmosphere rushed in. It smelled strange: salty and humid. She took an unsteady step forward, watching Jasper shove Lapis in front of her and out into the sunlight.

“Wait!” 

They were gone. 

After so much noise, the silence of the ship felt loud. Peridot heard her shuddering breath in the stillness. There it was again: fear. Peridot had never felt so much of it in her life, in so short an amount of time. Her introduction to actual mortal terror was barely a few cycles ago, her nose dripping blood and a renegade Gen standing over her with a hacked communication screen. It had never really gone away after that, not since her small treason, not since she learned the details of the history of this miserable failure of a colony. But now fear possessed her completely again, returning in full force. Her body was stuck, frozen, somehow feeling icy cold in the rapidly warming air of the stalled ship, beached there at the edge of the ocean like a drowned corpse. 

The rational response was to follow. Her station and her mission demanded it. She was a dispensable member of an array of nearly identical Peridots, within a massive army of soldiers and specialists with one purpose: to serve Homeworld and the Diamonds. Her cowardice was a betrayal to that purpose, to their goals on Sol III, and to her Commander that was walking nearly barely armed into enemy territory. 

But Peridot didn’t want to die. 

Another explosion of sound and a lurch knocked her from where her feet had been rooted. Peridot spun, reading the new damage report as it flickered onto the screen.

\+ Heavy damage to multiple systems  
Additional hull breach  
Engine damaged, DANGER, meltdown imminent

Peridot sprinted out of the airlocks.

“Don't you dare hurt him!” Lapis shrieked, her Wings hovering behind her, airfoils bristling like the hackles of a cornered animal. Jasper stood glaring back at the prisoner, looming over the unconscious body of an unidentified Gen and holding a human boy by his collar, his feet dangling. Two other Gens stood by, weapons drawn, hesitating. 

“So, you are a Crystal Gen,” Jasper said, cold amusement in her voice. 

“The Crystal Gens can rot,” Lapis barked back, “but he's done nothing wrong. I told you to drop him.” Behind her, her Wings emitted a shrill noise of warning.

Once again, Peridot thought to herself that Lapis's aesthetic was just a bit much. 

Jasper dropped him. He fell to his knees with a thud, then scrambled backward. One of the Gens scooped him from the ground into an embrace, cooing words of comfort. The other… where was the other one?

Peridot felt her skin break open in several places and she fell to the ground with an undignified yelp, her legs hobbled and arms pinned to her sides. Spitting out nearly swallowed grains of sand, she craned her neck, peering up at her captor: a Quartz soldier wielding a whip.

“Hey,” she drawled, grinning. “Gotcha.”

Something inside Peridot snapped. “You slimy, skulking son of a bi-”

A booted foot dug between her shoulder blades. “Hey! Watch your mouth, space case! There are children present.”

“Traitorous clod!” Really, clod? Between hysterical shouts, she wondered why was obeying the rebel’s request that she censor herself. “I'll shatter you!”

The Quartz sat down on Peridot's spine, pinning her, lounging nonchalantly like they weren't in the middle of an altercation. “I think we're gonna be best buds.” She laughed like she meant it.

Peridot gnashed her teeth and thrashed. “I'd rather swallow molten lead.”

The Quartz patted Peridot's head like she was soothing a fussy child.

Peridot realized she wasn't scared anymore. She was pissed.

BOOM

The Quartz scrambled to her feet, knocking the wind out of Peridot as she pushed herself upright. “Steven? Pearl!” She yelled, her voice cracking, dropping her whip and taking off at a mad sprint towards the billowing smoke that poured out of what had formerly been the side of a Manual class starship.

Peridot tore the whip off of her body, wincing at the sting and the itch of her wounds meeting open salty air and beginning to heal. Her ship. Not her ship. Not her only way home…

There was shrill zip and a blue streak overhead. Wings? Had Lapis escaped? Peridot squinted into the thick black smoke. Was Jasper still there? Was she okay? 

Four figures stumbled out of the smoke. Peridot watched in horror as the Quartz lifted a finger in her direction, and four pairs of dangerous eyes locked with Peridot’s. 

Her body made the decision for her. She fled, back into the ship, coughing on the acrid chemical smell of burning circuits and stardrive fuel that had already filed the confined space. This was dangerous and stupid, and absolutely desperate, but she didn’t have a choice. 

Her eyes stung and her muscles ached from lack of oxygen as she slid into her only hope: the escape pod. She slammed the door shut with enough force to rattle the joint in her shoulder and dove her gauntlets onto the controlboard. In one moment, she interfaced, started the engine, and willed the tiny starcraft to open its throttle as high as it could go. 

\----

Peridot blinks back into consciousness. Where… what? Slowly, she comes back into herself. She's on a small ship, stationary, the small physical window in the hull showing her only blackness. No stars, no sun. Is she grounded? Alarming memories shuffled back into place. Her Genstone whirs. This is the escape pod. She had been escaping! So, then, why is she… Peridot curses herself for her idiocy: she’d knocked herself out during her sudden acceleration. Too many G forces. Absolutely amateur. Her head pounding, she attempts to reinterface with the ship.

It doesn't respond. It’s out of fuel. 

Peridot is too exhausted to swear.

She's too exhausted to do anything. Numbly, she lies back against her chair, noticing now that she's twisted and tilted at an odd angle in relation to the ground. And she is on the ground, she realizes. Some mental math tells her that achieving escape velocity in that small craft would have been impossible, even if she had been conscious. Her escape from the rebel Gens is only temporarily.

She can't be bothered to find that alarming at the moment. Everything aches. Her tongue is dry. Her own pulse betrays her, sending shocks of pain through her skull with each beat of her heart. She knows she should be worried, and angry, and taking steps to contact someone, anyone, about what had happened to their mission.

But Peridot has run right out of fucks.

Impulsively, she reaches out and touches the surface of the ship’s door with her metallic fingertips. There’s a clink and it opens, letting in a rush of cool air. She looks up, passively. It’s nighttime. She can see the stars. She can see familiar stars, she realizes, here and there. She feels a painful twist of homesickness. How long until she’s out amongst those stars again?

A chorus of noises redirects her attention. There’s so many sounds… she hears the swishing of vegetation in the wind, and as her eyes adjust she can see the plant life, too, as dark swaying shadows all around her. The rustling is accompanied by noises she’s never heard before. Dimly, she realizes some of them must be animal noises. She sits up. She’s never been on an occupied planet with an intact biosphere before. Warily, she gazes around. There’s nothing… at least, nothing visible. Still, there’s a steady chirruping, some sort of ensemble of creaking trills, and several other small calls she lacks the vocabulary to name. In the distance, she hears a soft almost-voice, low, in simple syllables. A sort of hoo. 

Curiosity moves her. She raises her right gauntlet. “What is that?” She asks, tapping into the outernet, hoping someone had done some wildlife surveys of the planet during the attempted recolonization. 

Her right gauntlet beeps sadly. She looks down at its screen. This planet has no outernet connection.

The night chorus goes silent in the wake of her horrified screeching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do I love to torture Peri so?


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peridot learns more about Earth.

_This means war._

Bloody, messy war, Peridot thinks. 

No outernet connection. The outrage, the horror, the gross violation of human rights, Modified or otherwise. This planet had taken everything from her. Everything. She stomped her way down a dusty path she had found after trouncing through the ridiculous, scratchy field of vegetation. 

She checked her screen again. Blessedly, she had access to everything vital to her mission, including a map of all Gen constructions that had been built on the planet. There was a warp pad nearby, nearby being several leagues away, but it was something. Peridots were not made for marching, but a certain amount of stamina came standard in every Gen, thank the Diamonds. 

Besides, she was motivated. More motivated than she had ever been in her life. She was going to carry out her mission to retrieve those hard copy datalogs, and then she was going to get off this hunk of shit. She smirked to herself. Maybe the Diamonds would blow this rock out of the sky. Peridot and company had found the renegade Gens. Surely, after damaging Homeworld property and attacking a remarkable technician such as herself, some consequences were in order. Dire consequences. She hoped those consequences would be carried out slowly and painfully, preferably while she watched. 

There was a rumble, and twin lights shone out of the darkness in front of her. A vehicle. Peridot stood, glaring. She was too angry for caution. If there was a driver, let them see her. Let them _do their worst._

The vehicle approached, slowed, and pulled up alongside her. There was a driver. A regular human. They retracted the vehicle’s window and leaned out, speaking, concerned.

It was utter gibberish. Peridot checked her screen, searching for a clue as to the local language of the planet. She swore. There were several hundred. With a sigh, she turned back to the driver. “Do you understand me?” She asked in Galactic Common, like a civilized person.

More gibberish, but this time more aggressive. Almost accusatory. They gestured at her. More specifically, at the screen of her gauntlet. Peridot didn’t like that. 

“...lunatic?” Peridot perked up. A recognizable word! So the dialect had origins in Common, at least. Her mind and Genstone whirred, searching for some sort of grammar, some traces of familiar roots...

“What are you,” they seemed to say. They tumbled too many words out at once, but then pronounced the last two nice and slow, “goddamned freak?”

Peridot growled. The driver recoiled. She was being continually disrespected by an Unmodified buffoon in a tin can. That wasn’t going to stand. 

She reached out, dug the fingers of her gauntlet into the vehicle's soft shell of thin metal, and swung the door open, hearing a pop as the latching mechanism strained and then failed. The driver inside recoiled further, scrambling backward into the second seat on the opposite side of what looked to be the vehicle's bridge. She grabbed them by the ankles, laughed triumphantly, and tossed him bodily into the ditch. 

“Fucking bitch,” they yelled, clumsily climbing back onto their feet. Peridot sneered. It seemed like the local language was used mostly to insult her. She raised a gauntlet. There were simple weapons systems installed in her enhancements. She had never had the opportunity to use them before. 

She didn’t have a chance to give in to her curiosity or misplaced anger. Screaming some more gibberish, the driver turned tail and ran as soon as she brought up her arm, disappearing into the field of thick vegetation. She wondered if they were going to find the escape pod.

She turned around. The engine of the land vehicle was humming. Well, if they found her ship, they could consider it a trade…

\-----

It wasn’t quite as fun as piloting a spaceship. Of course not. But, Peridot had to admit, it had its charms. It didn't respond to her attempt at interfacing, but the simple vehicle’s controls were no match for her sharp intellect and singular intuition. She decided to name it Sirius B, since, like the star, it was small and white. 

Her gauntlet bleeped. She was close. She gave Sirius’s controlboard a grateful pat and checked her heading. The warp pad was a quarter league away, at a right angle from the track she had been following. For a moment, she paused. Then, with a gleeful grin, she spun the wheel and urged her little ship through the ditch and into thick brush.

The ride was bumpy and reckless and unnecessary. Peridot whooped. After the cycle she was having, she deserved a little bit of irrationality. She was… enjoying herself, somehow, on this crapsack world, without the small twinge of guilt usually inspired by her forays into flair and foolishness. She made a mental note to check herself for brain damage at the nearest opportunity.

Her gauntlet bleeped again. She braked and let Sirius skid to a halt in front of a ring of tall, sturdy plants. Semi-cautiously, she climbed out, moving forward slowly until she peaked around the rough narrow base of an individual plant. Oh, thank the heavens, she had found it, and it was unguarded. The warp pad. 

Well, mostly unguarded. She stomped forward. More fucking plants. 

“Rah!” She screamed, digging at the strange three-leafed tangle that had overgrown the warp pad. “Why is this planet,” she grunted, tugging away the surprisingly clingy web loose from the beautiful Gen tech in large clumps, “like this!”

There was a hum as her boots finally fully met the surface of the pad. Her Genstone connected automatically. Success! 

Peridot whooped again and brought up her screen. So many of the warp pads were still online. She could almost cry from happiness. There was even one that connected her right to the alpha Genetics lab, the destination of her primary mission. Her fingers hovered over her screen, ready to tap the map and whisk herself away.

She stopped, frowned, and climbed off the pad.

A moment later, she returned. The weight of a little ring that connected together a few strange metal shapes rested against her leg, tucked away in the pocket of her jumpsuit. It was a small piece of Sirius that had been removable.

It had been a stressful series of events, she reminded herself, she was allowed to be a little irrational.

\----

The warp pad worked somewhat similarly to the warp engine of a starship. A little space-time stretching, and then, _snap_ , it released, flinging the user across planet-sized distances nearly instantaneously. Just another marvelous Diamond invention. And it only induced a tiny bit of dizziness. 

Peridot stumbled into the foyer of the lab. 

To say it was eerie would be an understatement. It was utterly silent, dusty, abandoned. As her boots touched the ground she felt her Genstone connect to the Genetics lab’s main computer, verifying that she had the right to be there. Low powered emergency lights flickered on through the space. Good. It was still functional. Her task would be much easier this way. 

She walked, slowly, soft-footed despite the slimness of the chance that anybody might have stumbled upon the subterranean Gen structure. There was the possibility that the rogue Gens were here, waiting, of course, but Peridot wondered if they even knew she was alive. There had been plenty of confusion during her escape. And, if she had been spotted launching the escape pod, if any one of those Gens had been trained in flight, its likely they could have recognized her idiotic and dangerous acceleration. Peridot licked her dry lips. She could have died…

But that was besides the point, she thought, she was alive now, and carrying out her mission. She moved through the rows of Gen tanks, all empty, having served their purpose centuries ago, and followed the color coded lines on the ceiling until she found it. The main computer terminal.

She interfaced. The computer was sluggish and outdated, but completely functional. Thank the stars. She turned to her gauntlet screen, verified the identification numbers of the files she was meant to retrieve, and started the download.

So easy. Peridot slumped to the floor and leaned against the controlboard. Somehow, every ounce of energy within her drained out at once. She exhaled. The adrenaline rush had run out, she mused, watching the progress bar on her gauntlet fill slowly. The simple goal she had been spitefully chasing was nearly accomplished. Now all she had to do was find a way to signal for her retrieval and it would be over. She hoped her next leave would be a long one.

She blinked. It was a struggle to open her eyes again. Stars, she was tired. Deep down to her bones tired. She wasn’t one much for sleep. Gens rarely were, but her especially. It was wasted time; there was always something to be done, something to be read over. But somehow the hard stone surface she was resting on felt so very comfortable. Even the controlboard against her shoulder blades, slightly warm from the lights and the workings of its inner circuits, lulled her into drowsiness. She blinked again, long, her breath coming deep and slow. Maybe just a short rest would be beneficial. Yes, just while she waited for the download. There wasn’t much else she could do, right? She let her eyes close. Yeah, a short rest. There was no harm.

Peridot woke with a start. She blinked, blearily retrieving her bearings. A Gen lab, on Earth, er, Sol III, retrieving data. She looked at her gauntlet. The download had been successful. Dimly, she wondered how long she was out. She stood and instantly regretted it. Every muscle in her legs and back had tightened painfully while she slept, having been previously unused to sustained walking, untangling vegetation, and accosting pilots of tiny land vehicles. She swore, and then, with slow apprehension, as if remembering something important that had slipped her mind, she wondered why she had awoken with such a jolt. 

“Hey,” a voice said.

Peridot squeaked and spun, leveling her gauntlet at the source of the voice. Hiding slightly behind one of the Gen tanks was a human child. A familiar one. It was the child from the beach, the one that Jasper had grabbed, the one Lapis had protected. She lowered her gauntlet, slightly. “Who are you?”

“I’m Steven,” they said, stepping out from behind their cover. “What’s your name?” They were speaking perfect Common. She looked them over.

“I’m… Peridot Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG,” she replied, for some reason. She shook her head, as if to clear the nonsense from it. “What are you?”

“I’m… a human boy, mostly,” he said, sweating just a little. She squinted. He was nervous. 

She looked around the room frantically, searching for his Gen companions. “Are you alone?”

“Uhm… well…” 

She nearly swallowed her own tongue. “Where are they?” She stuttered, raising her gauntlet and pointing it into the dim rows of tanks. Why had she allowed herself to fall asleep? She’d delivered herself right into an ambush. The idiocy. She bit her tongue to keep from spitting curses. 

“Listen, Peridot,” he said, his hand raised, approaching. She swung her weapon at him. He stopped, eyes widening. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t want to hurt me?” She said, struggling not to shout. “You! You shot me out of the sky! You stranded me here! You–” she stomped forward and he flinched. “You _ruined everything!_ ”

“Wait, listen!” He plead, his raised hands almost imperceptibly shaking. “You’re alone and scared on a strange planet, we want to–”

“Scared?” She said, low, cold. The weapon in her gauntlet clicked on, whirring, charging a shot. “You and your Gen friends are the ones that are in danger.” 

She lifted her right arm, taking aim, and felt an unfortunately familiar sting as a cracking weapon ripped open the skin of her back.

She pivoted, yelping. The Quartz brandished her whip. “Don’t touch him!” She shouted. Two thudding sets of footsteps echoed through the lab. The others were coming. 

Peridot felt her stomach plummet and her veins go icy. Shit. Her intimidating speech suddenly felt like a fool's last words. Thinking fast, she raised her charged gauntlet and loosed the shot. The Quartz dove into a combat roll and came up swinging her whip. 

Once again, Peridot was reminded that, even with her Genstone working at full capacity, she was no match for the reflexes of a soldier. The whip wrapped around one of her boots as she backpedaled ineffectively, causing her to tumble backward into the human boy and knocking them both off their feet. He caught himself on an elbow, cushioning both of their falls. “Peridot, please!” He said, gripping her by the arm, “Let’s just talk!” 

She shoved him off of her and latched onto the whip's cord where it wrapped around her ankle. With a swift mental command, she electrified the hands of her gauntlets. The Quartz yelped and dropped her whip. Peridot smiled. She had been right, their whip was Gen tech, woven fibrous metal, very conductive. She struggled free and to her feet, making a dash for it–

She fell again, hard, nearly shattering her visor. What the fuck? She looked down at her left boot, the one that had seemingly betrayed her. 

It was damaged. Very damaged. As in, missing the gravity simulating sole and heel damaged. Peridot wanted to cry. Instead, she scrambled back to her feet and limped as fast as she could into a blessedly nearby unidentified room. Her hand slapped down onto the control panel, closing the door behind her, locking the renegade Gens outside.

Well, she thought, looking around the dead end room. More like locking herself inside. 

Loud pounding against the door made her jump. Well, temporary safety was still safety. She wondered if she could wait them out. They had a human boy with them, right? Those were no good at fasting for days. Maybe they'd just leave.

She doesn’t have the opportunity to wait and find out. There’s a clatter in the dim room that sends a shiver up her spine. For the first time, she really looks around, taking in the details. It’s another chamber of empty Genetics tanks. But… strangely large. What type of Gens were they growing here? She pulls up her gauntlet, now full of all the data produced by this lab. Without lowering her eyes, she whispers a query. “What was this room used for?”

She listens to the matter-of-fact description with growing disgust and horror. Genetic experiments. Cutting edge splicing. They had taken samples from local animals, written their own synthetic codes, and harvested information from the most successful Gens to create entirely new DNA sequences. They grew the results here. Many of them were unviable. Some of them were not…

A hulking shape ambles out from behind one of the tanks. It’s huge, barely human, and staring, all four of its reflective eyes trained on Peridot.

Peridot screams. Or rather, she hears herself scream, as if from a distance. It’s loud and primal and not a noise she could ever produce without cold horror and adrenaline squeezing every once of air out of her lungs. As if beckoned, the figure warbles and breaks into a four-legged run, heading in a purposeful line toward the source of the sound. Toward Peridot.

Unthinking, she slams her hand back onto the control panel and runs through the open door into the arms of one of the renegade Gens. 

“What in the ever loving fuck is that?!” She screeches, clutching onto the tall Gen in her way. She was shoved off of her, to the side, and the Gen stepped forward, gloved hands curled into heavy fists. 

“Language,” another Gen hissed, brandishing a deadly spiral spear. The monster reached the doorway, wrenched the opening wider with terrifying ease, and descended on the Gens with claws and slavering snarls.

Peridot fled, clunking along on her mismatched boots toward the exit, away from that abomination. What in Diamond's name? Surely the Diamonds didn't know about this. They couldn't. Who could do that? With human genes? Peridot wondered for an instant if the beast was sentient, and then banished the thought from her mind. She didn't want to know. 

She reached the warp pad. No one had followed her. She chose the first destination on the list and warped there, panting, on hands and knees. 

It was an island. Warm, bright, open. Peridot could kiss the sand. Instead, she crawled off of the warp and leaned against a large, seemingly volcanic chunk of rock, and dedicated herself to remembering how to breathe.

She supposed she should feel grateful to the beast. It had perfect timing, really, showing up at just the right moment to distract her would-be captors while she slipped away. Instead, she just felt deep-seated nausea that she couldn’t shake, even when her breath finally came steady through her itching, swollen throat. That creature was wrong. Fundamentally. She did not like sharing a planet with it. 

With hesitation, she accessed the file she’d first tapped to in that cursed room and checked the numbers. How many of those did she actually share the planet with? 

Even though any number would have been too many, she found the precise amount to be unacceptably high. 

She repeated her thought from earlier. There was no way the Diamonds could have known. They were benevolent beings; they’d given her and every homeworld Gen so much. They gave Peridot a purpose, her enhancements, a job that she, until recently, loved. They spread technology throughout the galaxy. Lives were saved, improved, extended. Gens spread throughout the cosmos, in pursuit of science and exploration, a force that made each new planet they found _mean_ something, truly, as soon as inquisitive and enterprising eyes laid upon them. The Diamonds were good. Fundamentally. Homeworld was good. They wouldn’t make that… _thing_.

Would they? 

She remembered the room, its contents vividly etched into her memory via the mechanisms of an acute fight or flight response. It was Gen tech, that was certain, the same that had been used to create all the Gens created on Earth, all the Gens of Homeworld’s other colonies, and even Peridot herself, back on Homeworld proper, the birthplace of the Diamonds and the Gen empire.

Could the renegade Gens have done this? Taken over the lab and made those awful things?

Peridot checked the logs. The room had been created after the rebellion had started. That made sense, right? There must have been a coup. Laboratory technicians that had gone double agent, building that place in secret. Yes, that had to be right!

But that meant admitting that there were Gens as capable as the Diamonds at writing the DNA recipe for a cutting edge Gen that could live beyond her gestation period. 

Peridot didn’t know if that was a preferable alternative scenario. 

She let her gauntlet fall into her lap. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t her job to know what happened. It wasn’t her job to question the Diamonds. Her job was to get this data, and, if it was possible, Jasper and the traitorous prisoner back home.

Lapis.

Peridot hadn’t spared a moment to think of her or Jasper since she had woken up in the escape pod. She supposed that made her selfish. But Jasper could take care of herself if any Gen could, Peridot was confident, and Lapis… she was probably quite comfortable, here on the planet with her rogue Gen companions. What had her and Jasper called them? Crystal Gens? Yes.

But something wasn’t quite right. All of the rogue Gens from the beach had made an appearance underground in the lab. And Lapis wasn’t with them…

Peridot gazed up at the clouds. Water vapor, she recalled, floating on swirling air currents, forming a somewhat unique colony feature: weather. They drifted above her, casting shadows, making her pattern-finding mind see shapes and faces and a few of the strange things she had been introduced to since she had landed on this planet. She was reminded of how she had thought, from space, that the planet was beautiful.

She lowered her eyes to her screen. She still had work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to make Common a language that was similar to Sanskrit, but unfortunately, I couldn't think of a word that an angry country folk might use with Sanskrit origins. So, 'lunatic', with its Latin roots, had to be the chosen insult. Alas, how typical.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peridot sets a trap.

It had been cycles. Innumerable cycles. She kept each day logged on her gauntlets as a way to keep time and her sanity. Her body was wrecked; her nanites just were just as exhausted as she was, and the damage from exposure and her run ins with the Crystal Gens had left its mark on her.. She had scars. Actual scars, like a veteran Quartz. The exposed skin of her arms sported the inflamed, itching pink of a rash she had picked up on her travels. She blamed the vegetation. When in doubt, it was best to blame the vegetation, she mused, as she used the torch built into her gauntlet to cut through impossibly thick vines.

All those cycles, and she hadn’t seen any signs of Lapis or Jasper.

But she had seen plenty of the Crystal Gens. They had been hunting her. Every one of her attempts to contact Homeworld had been thwarted. They’d destroyed the planet’s main communication hub as soon as she activated it. They’d destroyed the abandoned drones she had repaired and activated for her protection. They’d even broken warp pads in their pursuit of driving her mad. Hot, black hatred burned in her gut. It was always there, smoldering in the background of her thoughts, accompanied by the lung-crushing anxiety of a harried fugitive. She hadn’t known peace in what felt like eons. What little sleep she had allowed herself had been fitful and unsatisfying. Her eyes stung. She’d lost weight. In dark moments, she’d wished she hadn’t survived that wild flight in the escape pod.

But that wasn’t one of those moments. This was a moment of anticipatory delight. At last, the vines fell away from the doorway and she stepped into the ancient starship.

It was grounded, of course, having sat for centuries on the floor of a wet, tropical forest. But she wasn’t going to fly it. It was going to be a tomb for her enemies. She marched forward, having gotten used to her new limping gait, and rested her hands on the ship’s controlboard.

Yes, this would do nicely. She activated the ships protective systems, identified herself as the only non-hostile Gen, and commanded it to defend her aggressively. Dozens of weapons came online. Most of them were in working order. Exceptional. An unpracticed smile spread across her face as she strode further into the bowels of the ship, locating the captain’s hold. She locked the thick door behind her and commanded the ship to sound a distress signal on all frequencies. The trap was now baited.

She leaned against the controlboard, waiting, getting in what little rest she could for however long it would take the Crystal Gens to notice the signal and locate its source. It was ending today. It had to end today. Peridot didn’t know how much more she could take.

She looked down at her shaking hands.

A dreadful curiosity entered her mind.

“Computer,” she said, surprised at the croaking weakness in her voice, “perform a medical scan.”

The ship complied. It listed a number of things that she had expected: the rash, her knotted muscles, the slowly healing gash on her left shoulder. And then:

\+ Altered adrenal function  
Altered regional neurochemical composition  
Notable physical changes to the hippocampus and related midbrain structures  
Vascular hypertension  
Increased resting heart rate

Trauma.

Peridot slid to the ground. The results should upset her. Instead, she felt a familiar numbness. She had already known.

The ship alerted her. The Gens were here.

She stood. It was time to get to work.

\----

The first thing she noticed was that she didn’t hurt. Oh, stars, she had forgotten what that felt like, to wake up in a body without screaming nerves. She closed her eyes, riding the wave of bliss that accompanied her relief. Thank the Diamonds…

The second thing she noticed was that she was in a healing stasis chamber. That explained the miraculous return to her normal state. She’d thank whoever had put her there until she was out of breath, as soon as she found them.

The third thing she noticed was that she didn’t remember how she had gotten there.

She sat bolt upright. She’d been on that grounded ship, waiting for the Crystal Gens. There was a skirmish, a broken door, and…

“Hey, Peridot.”

She yelped. The boy. She’d been taken prisoner.

The door to the stasis chamber slid open. He stood before her, relaxed, his hands raised in the placating gesture he always used when she wasn’t actively attacking him. She recoiled into her seat.

“What do you want with me?” She asked, her healed injuries seemed suddenly ominous. Why would they heal her? Was she going to be tortured? Enslaved? Brainwashed?!

“I just want to see if you’re alright,” Steven said.

“Alright?” She snapped. “I’ll never be alright again, thanks to you Crystal clods!” Clods, again, it seemed. Peridot didn’t know many gentle epithets.

“There’s been a lot of misunderstandings…”

“Misunderstand _this_ ,” she shouted, falling on him with clenched fists. She slipped as her feet hit the floor.

Her feet. Not her boots.

She looked down. They’d taken her boots. Her boots!

She swung at the human boy with a left hook. It connected. He rubbed his cheek, unharmed. “Ow,” he said. “Hey!”

Peridot was ignoring him. Her attention was no longer on Steven. It was focused intently with growing apprehension on the exposed skin of the hand that had swiped at him. Exposed, gauntletless skin. Her brain was steadfastly resisting the obvious implications of what that meant.

“Oh,” he said, “sorry about your limb enhancer thingies, the Gens were afraid you’d use them against us if you woke up on the way back, so we…”

“You took my enhancements,” she breathed, raising up both palms, looking down at the web of geometric scarring left behind where her gauntlets had connected into her nervous system. The brush of air moving over the hands felt wrong. The paleness of the skin that had never seen light looked wrong. She brushed a fingertip over the palm. The unmolested nerve endings protested, registering all new sensations as slightly stinging heat. “You took my…” she mumbled, dumbly. Her stomach roiled and she fought not to retch.

“You’re upset,” he said, softly, as if to comfort her, as if he could comfort her.

She dug hands into his shirt, winching at the rough sensation of the fabric grinding into fingers. “I’ve never been more upset, you, you war criminals took everything from me, my home, my mission,” her voice broke, going deep and watery. The datalogs had died with her gauntlets. She looked down at the wrists, the fists at the end of her arms. _“You made my body wrong!”_

His face crumpled as the first sob shook her body. The hands untangled themselves from his shirt as she took a strangled gasp. She couldn't breathe, she, she–

She doubled over as the second sob took her, wrapping herself in a reflexive self-soothing gesture. It didn’t help. The arms around her were foreign to her. A stranger’s. Hot tears spilled from her eyes and dripped off the tip of her nose.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, his own tears muddling his voice, “I didn’t know it was like that, I didn’t know…”

“You don’t know anything,” she spat between shuddering breaths, feeling wretched and pitiful and utterly debased. This was the ultimate violation of her dignity and free will. Her mind and now her body were ruined. How could any group of Gens be so unforgivably depraved? And why, why did all this have to happen to her?

She felt herself get pulled into Steven’s chest, clutched close. Without her boots, they were nearly the same height, and he outweighed her. It made her feel small. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise, we promise,” he said. It was sincere.

Despite herself, despite her burning hatred for the Gens he associated with, and this planet, and nearly everything in the known universe, she buried her face against him, letting her bitter tears fall and erode at the edges of her helpless fear and sorrow. He rubbed one hand against her back, surprisingly strong. His compassion made her heart ache and her tears flow faster. They were enemies. He had nothing to gain by consoling her. Why did he do it? Why did someone so consistently kind affiliate themselves with a band of heartless treasonists?

She went stiff, gulping air, forcing her lungs and vocal cords to stop their spasming. She listened hard, concentrating. “What’s wrong?” He said, above her. So quiet, almost on the edge of her hearing, she caught it. The gentle buzz and whir of a working Genstone.

Peridot recoiled. “You’re a Gen!” She accused, holding him away from her. “You lied to me!” Somehow, this betrayal cut her deeply. Her eyes swept over him. He wasn’t like any Gens she’d ever seen before. Then how?

Steven had the decency to look ashamed. “I didn't lie, well, not all the way. I'm a human, too! Half-human.”

She stared at him incredulously. That was impossible. Gens didn't breed. They couldn't. A functioning reproductive system was obsolete and troublesome. “A hybrid? How?” Her heart nearly stopped. “Are you one of those… experiments?”

“No!” He said, shocked. “I was born like a human, no labs. I have a dad.”

That last word was nonsense to her, but the meaning wasn't lost. “How?” She asked.

“Well, uhm…”

She cut him off, feeling queasy. “Nevermind. Why have you brought me here?” Peridot wiped at her eyes under her visor and looked around the room. There were hundreds of stasis chambers littered about, obviously salvaged and cludged into the structure’s electrical system. Many of them were turned on, in use.

“I don’t think you’re bad!” He blurted. She looked at him sideways. “I think you’re on a strange planet with no friends, and you don’t know any better. You don’t know us!”

Peridot looked past him at the rows and rows of stasis chambers. Many were covered in a layer of fine dust. “The other Gens don’t know you let me out, do they?” She murmured, her breathing shallow, thinking of spending the eons locked in stasis, her final moments effectively taking place on that ship, her final memory being failure and fear and huge gloved hands slamming into her spine.

Steven grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. It was plainer than a verbal admission.

“Well then, what do _you_ want from me?” She asked, sitting down on the floor, her arms held behind her back.

He sat down too. “Let’s talk?”

So they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn Peri that's a bad day


End file.
